part of seeing the future, is seeing what will be a problem in the near future, and then anticapating how the problem will be dealt with..
Malthus saw population out stripping production of food, and saw only a famine.. Darwin saw other possiblities.. such as increases in food productions..(he looked backward, to be sure, but he saw the past as an indication of the future) famine was only one possiblity...
sure enough, soon, man had learned how to remove nitogen from the air, instead of being dependant on guano, and food production increased, no famine..
or as an other example, electronic's grew during WWII, the sheer weight of the wiring was becoming a factor in building planes.. there needed to be a better way to wire components.. first step was introductions of circut boards.. and they lead--to transistors --as scientist/engineers saw a new way of making circuts... and the idea of flat wires-, and that idea plus new product technology lead first to transistors and from there to chips!
which actually lead to planes being better equipped, and weighing less.. so the expensive technology of 1947 (the year my father immegrated..) was soon replaced with lighter faster planes, that could carry more payload, and resulted in cheaper costs to consumers.. and so 40 years later, he had flown over 100,000 in less than 3 years, and qualified for a free flight to alaska!
what problems is looming now for the world? can some of the political problems of the mid east vs modern world find new solutions?
In modern (western) countries, muslims embrace technology.. one specialize gizmo that sells well in NY is a program for a sharp/franklin (and other PDA's)-- that is programed to provide reminders to the devout when they should pray (since the , the, (the guy who calls all the devout muslems to pray from the mineret) is not a common site on NY street corners. )
what other problems are looming? polutions? energy? resourses like fresh water? what technology exist to solve these problems? and if the technology doesn't exist.. it will be invented
last year, when California was having an energy crisis, it was pointed out, it would be cheaper for the state to buy every household solar panals than to continue subsidizing energy producers.. problem was, there weren't enough solar panals in the world.. but if the state goverment made it a plan, and there would now a huge market for panels, more people would produce them, and some innovator would figure out how to make them better and cheaper (and still charge the same retail price and make him/herself richer) and with the innovations, there would be more competition, and other improvements would come about and soon, instead of being generally cost in-effective,increased competition would lead to lower prices. soon solar panels would be as common as cell phones!
right now, we (in US) have so many generators, and so much invested in land lines for providing electricity by wire... there is very little effort to make solar panels.. but if some one did a bit of work, places that do not have the pre existing infrastructure would snap up the technology..
cell phone took off in europe and former USSR-- they did not have the same level of infrastructure.. and there was a pent up demand for phone service.. here, in US, cel phone use lagged.. but we have great land service and a 3 day wait for a land line is unusual.. (but i understand that 3 week or 3 months or even 3 years waits for a land line not uncommon in countries as advanced as Netherlands before cell service and for less developed countries, waits for land lines stretched to decades!)
i see an increased need for portable technology.. and batteries are just not going to cut it.. there is a growing need for some way to keep all the portable technology running.. with out tons of batteries.. so soon, there will be a solution... at first, it will be more expensive than batteries.. but as more and more users buy into the technology, it will become cheaper, and more effecient!
(well that my take on the future..!)
